Historically, product development involves the design of a product, engineering of the product and then manufacturing of the product, typically in large volumes. In small companies, each of these tasks is typically performed by only one or a small number of individuals who have easy access to individuals performing the other product development tasks thereby allowing each individual, regardless of his responsibilities to know or be able to obtain details of the entire design, engineering and manufacturing process.
However, such accessibility is not possible in large size corporations, particularly where individuals for a particular project or product development may be separated by hundreds or thousands of miles.
In order to address scheduling issues for project or product development involving many individuals, the project or product development steps are defined as a series of sequential and parallel tasks where each task describes the work to be done and the people assigned to the task. This type of system routes tasks to assigned individuals and allows for an indication of when each task is completed so that the next individual is notified that it is time to start the next task.
Current trends in manufacturing involving ISO-9000 and QS-9000 standards require all phases of a project or product development to be documented. This provides an opportunity to generate a database for project or product development which can be archived for access in the future when a similar project or product arises.
However, what is needed is a project monitoring apparatus and method which enables easy, interaction between authorized individuals in all phases of the project sequence, which minimizes notifications to individual about project issues, tasks, changes, etc., where such notifications are not necessary, and provides project documentation which can be archived for future reference.